Q: Margarita, what are you currently preparing for your artistic activity?
M: On October 17, we will have a concert at the Teatro Sucre. It will be a passionate repertoire, where the main issue is absence, parting, and death. It’s called “Love, rancour and return, songs for dying.”
We try to always do a major creation a year, linking old and new codes; repertoires of traditional and less traditional styles. We’ve prepared it with a lovely cast of musicians. For me it was always important to assess the musician, the magician who is endowed with a special condition to offer to others, to give, to accompany; they are top musicians and this is a source of pride for me. We’ll carry out a tour of various sites with this production. We shall see.
Moreover, we are also recording and hope it will become a CD, not because it is a hit but rather a compilation, a sum, a proposal that includes classics and contemporary authors; Ecuadorian and music from many other places, because it is important to show the music, the universal songs that deal with issues that touch us all.
I write and work with words and say that when I sing I’m always working the literature. We are also working on a poem by César Vallejo, accompanied by music and have included popular songs played on the jukebox that will thrill audiences of all the Andes area and beyond.
Q: Why are you joining the Global Campaign for Nonviolence Day?
M: Because every day we wake up with the hope of overcoming violence that fills us with anger and resentment. There are many reasons for anger in our environment. Social inequality, disrespect, lack of recognition of the other, but what we really should alert is apathy. Apathy is a silent form of violence and I think it encourages it, it allows it. Joining the campaign is a way of saying that it may be possible to have a kinder, less violent, non-violent environment.
Q: How do you imagine a world without violence?
M: It is a world ruled by very courageous women (laughs). We live with many inequalities, but I think very painful one that humanity faces is gender inequality, where being brave is confused with being weak.
I think we’d have a better world if women defended ourselves, defended more the fruits of our love; if we deployed more our immense capacity to create, to build, to decide, to lead kindly and see a brighter horizon.